Demonstrating the biggest problem with this site.. Topic

Most of the those dates are pre-FOX. You don't see many this decade at all.

How many new users are coming to this site?

Attrition... We change interests, we lose interest in playing the same game. And the site isn't doing anything to bring in new users.

The battle for the web is fought two ways: Organic search results and paid search results. As far as I can tell, the paid search budget for Whatifsports.com is $0. Want to check? Go to www.spyfu.com and enter this URL (or any URL).

And the organic search results aren't getting it done either. If you want to find WIS, the only combination of words that get it to the front page of google are "Simulated Baseball". They wind up third there. Fantasy baseball... All time baseball... Baseball computer game... All fall short.

In short, they're losing the battle for the eyes and wallets of new customers.

Then when a new user gets here, he gets his butt handed to him by the cookie monsters in open leagues. And he leaves.

Gee.... Nice business model.

They need someone who understands SEO optimization, web analytics, and online marketing, and to give him a reasonable budget for adword purchases to bring in new blood.

Then they need to change the rules so that once you win 3 open leagues, you are ineligible for further rewards including TOC entry. Take the incentive away from the cookie monsters.

Unless they do that.... Even if the promised re-build of the site occurs, we're sitting here on a zombie site. It's dead, but it's still limping along.

Awhile back, I came up with an idea for another tournament. Six rounds, thirty-one 24-team leagues in all. For anyone keeping count, that would be 744 teams purchased over the course of the next 12-14 months. Multiply 744 times $12.95 (or whatever the discounted cost would be for those buying six-packs) and it comes out to a pretty good amount of change.

I sent the request in two weeks ago today to ask if I could post the tournament and advertise the payout to the champion of the tournament - $310 worth of credit. This is standard from what has been promised and given out over the last few years when I run these tournaments ($10 of credit per league). I ask each time just to cover my butt - in case someone wins one of these tournaments and then WIS says, "we didn't promise any winnings this time around."

Like I said, I sent that in two weeks ago. I haven't heard anything back yet...

Newbies can opt for the full price team & schedule if they want. But I think most will whet their teeth in the kiddie pool before they jump into the shark tank, especially if WIS explicitly tells them about the sharks.

Now you can say: What about aliases? Who cares? If you have such a weak ego that you want to create an alias to pay $5 a game against newbies with no rewards, for a maximum of 6 games or 1 championship, then you can do it. I don't see it as a good choice. Some will do it... But better one or two teams of sharks than entire leagues of them.

So, where are players going? If very few new players are joining and there's attrition among existing players, where else are people getting their Sim fix? Ultimately, if we all went to a better site, WIS would either adapt or die.

biglenr - terrific addition again, but let me add one more point. If WIS would ever go to multiple "open leagues" then I believe we should allow all owners (all-star, hall of fame, etc.) to particiapte, for a couple reasons. First, in my 30 plus years of trying to teach customer service to young Air Force members (who don't listen) I've learned a lot. In addition to improving your guest service techniques to gain new customers you must also take action to keep the customers who have remained loyal to you. Since theme leagues take a long time to fill (hopefully that will change) we need to allow our "old timers" to try something new and refreshing or else they may get fed up and leave. Point two is the learning factor. When I started way back when I was terrible (that hasn't changed much!) but in addition to the forums teaching me I also learned a heck of a lot from the hall of famers in my leagues. Watching who they used, the batting order, the pitching rotation, etc. I sometimes worry that the newbies will not gain knowledge quickly (hence then moving on to theme leagues) if there is no one to really challenge them. Not allowing TOC, award points, etc. is certainly valid, but many of the ones that have been playing the site for a long time really don't care that much about "winning" as opposed to just the fun of building a team!